Setting valid start provinces...

[Nerfix]

Jyah.

[Arralen]

@ Nerf & Endo

He said he's working on a hex map editor, not a hex editor. Google for "hex editor" and you'll notice the slight difference in use ... .


@ Ballbarian

Why don't you use either

6.4 #start <province nbr>
By creating at least one start location for each player,
every player will start at one of these locations.

6.5 #specstart <nation nbr> <province nbr>
Use this command to assign a specific nation to a specific
start location. Nation nbr can be found in table 1.

Table 1: Nation numbers
0 Abysia
1 Atlantis
2 Pythium
3 Man
4 Ulm
5 Ctis
6 Arcoscephale
7 Caelum
8 Ermor
9 Marignon
10 Pangaea
11 Vanheim
12 Jotun
13 R’lyeh
14 Mictlan
15 T’ien Chi
16 Machaka

[Ballbarian]

Sorry for any confusion that I have caused.
I have been building a visual basic program which was intended to be, as Endoperez stated: "a working tool that allows even art-challenged people to create maps!"

I have been designing it to use custom hex tile sets and overlay sets which are defined via an external text file. Allows placement or painting of tiles and transparent overlays, customizable borders & rivers, province markers, and text. The drawing portion is pretty much complete, but I was also developing the ability to edit the .MAP files themselves. Currently, it will locate and number provinces, guess neighbors and retain terrain information. Eventually I would like it to be able to read/edit existing .MAP files as well. The hardest and most time consuming part has been the building of a database to allow for sorting through all of the units, spells & equipment from within the editor without having to go to seperate sources for that information. If I ever finish all of that, my ultimate goal was to be able to generate complete random maps, but that is a long way off.

@ Arralen,

Thank you, but this map is so small that it would be impossible to set up fair starting positions for every nation. Also, because of the style of the map itself, it is divided into north and south with a central chokepoint and a strategically critical central island (Isle of Thrones). For these reasons, it will be limited to 2 OR 4 nations to insure a north/south split.

[Arralen]

Then simply use
#start <province nbr> :
"By creating at least one start location for each player, every player will start at one of these locations."

Simply mark 2 or 4 provinces as starting provinces and you're done.
Dunno why everyone thinks he has to mark every other province as nostart ... . Unless you want really random starting provinces, but some corner provinces or those with only 1 neighbour taken from the list of possible draws.

[Ballbarian]

*slaps forehead*
I knew that, but for some stupid (no sleep) reason, I was thinking that my only other option was #specstart. That is what I get for not just sleeping on it before I run to the forums.
Thank you!

[Edi]

Ballbarian, your editor program sounds very interesting. I've been entertaining the idea of making the Dom3 databases for units, weapons etc as an SQL database (and perhaps import some queries to make an Excel quickref list). If you intend to convert the program for Dom3 when it comes out, would that sort of a DB make it easier for you to do the unit manipulation? True enough that it'd be an external source, but I'm just asking for future reference.

Edi

[Ballbarian]

It would definately make my life easier.
I have been using Access97 (mdb), but VB is very flexible when it comes to databases. One of the biggest items on my wish list would be a dataset that included unit sprites, but without Illwinter making them available as a download, it's just too big a project to try and attain them manually. Anyhow, I think that would be a great resource Edi.